Giant Arrives Next Door

Our two dogs, Wally and Maisie were shocked to discover a giant had moved in next door. It started with a bit of deep woofing at very close proximity one dark and windy evening and led to them unexpectantly coming nose to nose over the wall.

 We discovered that the giant (known as Coco) can jump the wall and get through our otherwise small-dog proof enclosures in the garden. This has left Wally with permanent sticky up fur on the back of his neck and a nervous twitch. 

Maisie on the other hand, has previously been scratching her ear fluff and now has considerably less on the left hand side. It looks ridiculous and no matter how much I tell her, she doesn't seem to take any notice.

It turns out that Coco isn't the scary colossus that Wally has taken her for, but a lovely chocolately coloured big ball of fun. Now that she has been rescued and lives in a loving home, it won't be long before the three of them are chasing each other over in the park.

Reading to Bram

Last weekend I found myself reading Vincent and the Vampires to the Great Great Great Grandsons of  Bram Stoker! That truly was a 'Wowsers' moment! I was at the first Isle of Wight Literary Festival, which was a thing of wonder! May there be many more.

This week I have been focussing on cracking on with Wally and Bert and waking up at night thinking about my next exhibition, which starts in a month at the Apollo Theatre. I shall have some new work up on the theme of Shakespeare Quotes as well as some artwork from my two books. I'll be there in the intervals for any questions or book signings. 

Happy Halloween!

Wildlife Day

Tomorrow (22 Sept) I shall be at the Wildlife Day at The Riverside Centre in Newport from 10am. I'll be on hand for signing books (only 88 sleeps 'til Father Christmas comes) along with all manner of Wildlife types! RSPCA, WSPA, IoW Bat Hospital & more arranged by the League Against Cruel Sports. Brian May from Queen is coming to speak on behalf of his Badger conservation group.
See you there! Wear your Badger Hat!

Tutorial part 2 - the making of a Wally cover

In the first part of this tutorial, I painted the little dawg. This next bit is the scary bit. The first time I decided to do this, I did think I was about to ruin a perfectly good painting that had taken me some time to do. I can't even remember what made me do it, but I found myself, scalpel in hand, cutting around a character. Happily, it all ended well, and I have been working like this ever since.

Take your sharp scalpel, with a new blade in it (I use a 10A) and cut! I left a few mm around the dog.

 

Scan in and Edit - Place on your photoshop document. 

If you look in the Layer menu, you will see there is a 'levels' option. You can move the arrows up and down to bring your character into focus with the background easier to erase. (Thanks @BeckaMoor, I was listening!)

 Then choose the 'magic eraser' tool from the side bar on the left. You will probably be flashed up with a warning sign that Smart Objects need to be Rasterized, but just press ok.

You can see here on the pic above and below that with the magic eraser, it doesn't get everything. But I use that to my advantage as I like it to look like a layer, not an element of a whole picture. It gives the image a more 3d appearance. The leg I've circled in blue I need to erase a bit more as it looks a bit scruffy, but the red circle I left almost as it was.

 I already had worked on the front cover graphic elements, so I just used Edit - Place to put him in the right spot. As you can see, his legs are sticking out the bottom of the circle, so making sure I chose the right layer, I carefully erased them.

 Here's the finished piece.

Thanks for looking at my blog. 

For further details of my other work, you can visit

www.scarlettinc.co.uk

Tutorial part 1 - the painting of a Wally

For those of you who are interested, I thought I would show how I went about painting and creating one of my Wallys from the book I'm working on at the moment, Wally & Bert BFF's.

I start with drawing the layout of the page on thin Layout paper, then trace through onto watercolour paper just one of the elements, in this case, Wally. The pic on the left is a colour rough and if you look carefully, you can see the light pencil drawing on the right.

With my Staedler water resistant black pens, I draw the outline of the character. In this instance I have used a thicker pen for most of in, with some thinner for details.

When I'm sure it's dry I rub out the pencil lines and load clean water onto the area I'm about to paint.

Flying in the face of all I was taught at school, I like to mix my paint on the paper, although I do have a rough idea of what colour I want to end up with. So in this case I have loaded some W&N bright red artists watercolour watered down only a touch.

 

And then I chase it around the paper! You never know what is going to happen as watercolour tends to have a mind of it's own (and a close relationship with the laws of physics!)

I like to add water and literally sit there watching paint dry. I remove areas with my wet brush for the highlights and add more paint to the edges and more often than not splodge drops of water onto large areas to give texture. Although it looks like he has a fatal case of smallpox, I know it will look different when dry.

While the head is still wet, I have added some W&N Brown Madder to the area around his eye and ear tip...

and some Vandyke brown. I keep going until I'm happy.

And here he is with his lower half attended to and he's now mostly dry. The intentional (ahem) mistake I made was to forget the waistcoat texture, so I did that after he dried and before I started to colour it.

I love sparkly stuff, so for the waistcoat I used Daler Rowney Pearlescent Liquid Acrylic, Macaw Green, a little splash of pinky red for the bone. As you can see, the 'smallpox' effect has disappeared and he's now ready for the next stage, which will be in part 2.

 

The birth of a lovely thing...

Caw blimey, at long last it's SCORCHIO! The dogs are busy baking their little brains dry while Mr M is whacking posts into the new studio site, in preparation for the structure to go up. I can't wait to have somewhere proper to work, after all these years of working here... (yes, that is the end of my bed)

 and here... (yes, that is a 3ft cubby hole where no light can possibly reach)

 I will soon be working from here....

Obviously, by soon, I mean hopefully by Christmas. 

I accidently had quite a lot of time off illustrating following the arrival of the two younger M's. How I laugh now at my naivite, thinking I might take 3 months off after having number 1. Surely, I could work while rocking his baby chair with my foot, couldn't I? So 3 months turned into 7 years, but when number 2 started nursery, I bought a table and got the brushes out again. 

Actually, it did me a favour. Much as you need to stand back from your painting to see it properly, I found standing back from my techniques made them come into focus. I saw what I liked doing and what I was good at, and found ways around the things I found difficult. Thus working in layers was born, and later, working much more with the help of my digital friend.  So the time off wasn't wasted, it was like waiting for the strawberry jam to set.

This week I have been entertaining the small M's who are having rather too much fun, and have started story number 5 for the Red Wellington's series which is a slightly animated gang of stories. I have also been pouffing up Wally and Bert, who came back with their tail between their legs (that'll be Bert between Wally's legs - all will be revealed) after being returned from an agent. Luckily tomorrow it is going to rain, so I'll be able to concentrate fully on the poor little fellas, as they are feeling like they've been chucked out of Britain's Got Talent. Rock on Wally!

This afternoon I have been squeezing and squashing some pics into an email to Rob at www.literacyshed.com as he is very kindly going to make a photostory of Vincent. What a fab resource for all things literary and thank goodness for Twitter, without whom I would never have known about the literacy shed. Go on, follow the link and have a look for yourself.

In other news from Scarlett Inc Heights, I've been having a first, second and third go at the front cover for Wally and Bert. Comments welcome!